


Was madness ever gentle?

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Body Swap, Bodyswap, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:40:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25549852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Jaime and Brienne switch bodies every now and then.It’s uncomfortable, to say the least.(a canon-era fic that largely follows canon plot.)
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 16
Kudos: 122





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written 27 july 2020.

The first time it happened, she was four years old and in the bath.

Her septa had a rough brush and was scrubbing away at the mud caked on to Brienne’s legs, muttering to herself about little girls who wandered away from their fathers and went into the wilderness and were eaten by bears and never _never_ got another hot supper _their whole life_. It was a very boring lecture, and Brienne had heard it before anyway, but still she was surprised when it ended — usually it went on a bit longer. 

More surprising was that she was in a different room, staring at a man. “Do you understand me?” he said.

“No.” She looked at him. Tall and greying and stern. Angry. With her?

He cuffed her hard on the side of the head and she stumbled and woke in the bath again, and there was her septa, still scrubbing and talking.

“Where did you go?” said Brienne.

She’d forgotten about it by the next time it happened.

This time she was practicing with her swordmaster, gritting her teeth when he went past her guard, trying to follow his instructions that all came at once, and —

“Jaime?”

The room was spinning; she felt sick, and bent over, her hands on her thighs.

“Are you — do you need a maester?”

“Just a moment.” The black spots were clearing, and this was — this was — “Is this a castle?”

“Are you drunk?”

She felt drunk. Strange. Different. And the person in front of her was very different.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “Whatever is wrong with you?”

“You’re a dwarf,” she said. It was impolite to say that right out, probably, but she’d never seen one before and she didn’t know the rules. “Who are you? Where are we? How did you get here?”

He stared. He licked his mouth. “Who am I?”

“However would I know that?” said Brienne — and the world spun dark.

She woke up in the grass, with her swordmaster leaning down over her, his hand brushing her forehead.

_Jaime_ the dwarf had said, as if it was her name.

Sometimes it happened and she did not know she was gone. Once she was reading a dense history of Westeros, one of the old tomes her father used to weight open doors in the summertime; she was so absorbed that she didn’t notice the change until it was done.

She (he) was also sitting at a table and reading. Trying to read. Someone was speaking sharply, telling her (him) whatan idiot he was, that this was simple, even Tyrion could do better and he’s half your age, he’s a _child_ , Jaime.

Brienne stuttered. “What — what was the passage again?”

He showed her through his teeth, and Brienne read it aloud.

“Good,” said the man. “For once.”

She slipped into the other when she was asleep, and only knew it was strange because the dream dissolved into sticky, shameful release.

She woke with her hand between her legs, thinking of a woman with blonde hair. Beautiful and green eyed, and her name had been on the tip of her tongue — where did it go?

Not often and not rarely, and the switching didn’t seem to be connected to anything except perhaps some strong emotion. Fear or boredom or joy or pain. It happened once when she had a bad time of bleeding; one moment she’d been in her bed, pressing her hands hard into her belly, — the other she was standing outside a door in full armor, listening as someone wept nearby.

The switching was always such a shock that Brienne could not think of what to _do_ , and this time was no different. She looked down at her body — he wore golden armor and a white cloak — and then looked up and out — he stood in a stone doorway in a stone hallway.

Inside the room, a woman sobbed.

Brienne stood frozen.

She had always told herself she would be a knight some day. She told herself that when it was time to help someone she would know what to do and she would do it.

Her right hand moved to her side.

A sword hung there.

Could she really use it? 

_Ought_ she? 

No. This was some magic, some mischance. The grieving woman was alive — at least for now — and the situation was unknown. Rushing in and waving around a sword would only make things worse.

Oh but if only there were someone to ask for advice —

And then came the black-spotted dizziness, the pinching nausea, an d she was back at her table in Tarth. 

It was so totally unexpected that for a moment, Brienne thought this was _another_ body — a totally new one. But. No. This room was all familiar to her. The nightshift was her own and the chair was hers and the book was one she’d been reading on heraldry, but now it was open to the frontspiece and scrawled right there over the ornate illustration of a knight fighting a dragon and possibly winning, were the words 

_Who are you, wench_

In retrospect (she thought), it was obvious that whatever body she inhabited during those brief times ( _Jaime_ , she thought. _His name is Jaime_ ) that he also came to be in hers — but she didn’t like it. The thought was ... uncomfortable, in some vaguely unsettled way she couldn’t explain. What did he do with her body when she was away? And really, how dare he?

It was the same sensation that she had after she heard the squires say vile things about a girl from the village: the feeling of wanting a bath or a fight or both.

Once she woke from sleep with her legs spread and her hand between them, searching —

She rolled on her side, embarrassed and ashamed.

Someone slapped her across the face, and Brienne laughed.

She really had been laughing, but this one came out deeper than her own laugh did, and more bitter.

“Oh, it’s all very funny,” said a woman. “Everything is a joke to you ...”

“It’s not a joke,” said Brienne.

Cat-green eyes narrowed. “It’s not.”

“You’re unhappy. That isn’t — it isn’t funny.” Jaime was wearing light wool in grey and black and red and gold, sitting cross-legged on a bed high off the floor. This was a wide, spacious room, with ornate furniture, and the shutters were open to the sunlight.

It was raining on Tarth.

“You’ve laughed at me often enough before. Should I believe what you did then or what you say now?”

Neither. Both. Brienne shook Jaime’s head. “I — I had a change of heart.”

The woman balled her fist. “You really are a fool, sometimes ... Whatever are you staring at?”

Brienne _had_ been staring. She turned her gaze down to the blankets. “You are very beautiful,” she said: partly because she was envious, partly because it was true.

The woman’s expression didn’t change. She had heard it before, often enough that it gave her no joy. “My beauty will not last long when Robert learns of this. Hardly more than a few hours, I should think. Just imagine. If this warm weather holds, my head will rot off its pike within a week.”

“What,” said Brienne: and then the wave of sickness swirled up, and she was gone.

Something happened after that and for a long time they did not switch. Only once, when she learned that her fellow-soldiers had a bet going on her virginity — only that once she felt the tension grip her gut and the world spin, and found that Jaime was in a tiny dark stinking cellar of a room, spread with filthy rushes underfoot, hunger in his belly and a fierce guilt clawing at his chest.

Dim light came from a window set high in the stonework, far too small to require bars. All that was in the room were a set of leg-irons — thankfully empty — and a bucket, its use easily identified by the smell. 

Was he a criminal?

She had nothing to write with, no way to leave a message — 

Wait.

She staggered to the waste-bucket on legs not used to moving, and (gods help her; gods help them both) she dipped her finger into the muck. _His_ finger.

_I am Brienne_ she wrote on the stone, with frustrating slowness. _If you are an honorable man I will hel_

And the world swayed, and dimmed, and she was back in her own room, and her hands were clean.

Jaime had left her no message at all. 

Lady Catelyn was strong and true and brave, and so it was that Brienne could not understand her plan. “Surely, my lady, if he is your prisoner ...”

“I must have my daughters back.” She leveled a gimlet stare at Brienne. “They are worth more than any Lannister bastard.”

“Is that a _woman?”_ the Lannister bastard said, with insouciant cheerfulness.

Brienne felt a very strong urge to stomp in his face.

“You’re a bloody big sort of a wench,” he finally said when they were away from the camp and heading east. “What was your name again?”

“Brienne.”

“Brienne,” he said. “You hail from Tarth, I imagine. They’re all giants in the Stormlands, or so I hear.”

“Walk faster.”

“Unusual name, Brienne.”

“Nothing so strange about it.”

“The first time I heard of anyone with that name,” said Jaime, “it was written on the wall of my cell.”

She stumbled.

He twisted round. “I _knew_ it.”

“You know nothing. Keep walking—”

“Don’t act more stupid than you can help. That was you all those times. It _was.”_

“Keep walking, Kingslayer.”

Jaime snorted, but at least now he went forward without complaint.

He stole her sword — _her sword!_ — and laughed at her, tossing it from hand to hand like it was a ball. “Shall we dance, my lady?”

Brienne was furious at him for cheating her, furious at herself for being sloppy, falling prey to a pretty face and a quick smile. She stepped forward and brought down her second sword —

The darkness caught her by surprise.

It startled Jaime, too, and wasn’t that something new? Seeing him move in her body, jerking back to keep from cutting her open — from cutting himself open —

He was breathing hard and so was she.

Neither one knew what to do.

They stared at each other.

“Well,” said Jaime, in Brienne’s own voice. “This is an interesting problem.”

The Bloody Mummers found them like that.

They were bound face to face, arguing in whispers.

“It’s never lasted so long before. Why won’t it go back? What did you do?”

“You think this is _my_ fault!”

“It certainly isn’t mine, you great big ... ugly ... giant.”

“At least I don’t use my looks to get what I want. Nor my father’s money.”

“You couldn’t if you tried—”

“They’re going to rape you,” said Brienne, when the day was drawing closed. “Beat you, too. Knock in your teeth. It’ll be easier if you don’t fight back, but I don’t think you want to make it easy for them—”

A short laugh. “You’ve got that backwards. They’ll rape _you_. I am not staying in this lumbering body a moment longer.”

“If my hand were free,” said Brienne, a moment later.

“If,” said Jaime, in her voice.

He fought back.

It was hard to watch him be kicked, hard to hear the sound of her body breaking, — but (she thought) the screaming would be worse.

And what happened if he was killed?

Brienne took a deep breath and lied. “Sapphires,” she said.

Jaime had the mark of a boot on his face; he’d bitten through her lip and kept spitting blood unto her tunic. One eye was purple and swollen shut;  the other stared across at her. _What are you doing?_ it said.

_Saving you,_ she replied.

And then they cut off her hand.

— Jaime’s hand. Someone’s hand. It hung between them, rotting and fly-crawled, as they were tied together again and on the back of another horse, heading to — somewhere — she didn’t know. 

The world was pain and it didn’t seem to matter if it was her own pain or Jaime’s, there wasn’t any difference any longer between them; she flickered into his body for awhile and then returned to her own, back and forth without warning, because the world was spinning already so much.

The only way to know between them was that Jaime had two good eyes and Brienne had two good hands.

He insulted Renly in the Harrenhall baths and Brienne stood up — in her own body - water sluicing off from her nakedness.

Jaime held her eye, not looking down. “That was unjust of me. We should call a truce.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“There’s little enough I can do to you, wench, without hurting myself.” He paused. “That didn’t seem to stop you, though. Should I cut off your hand too, so we’re even?”

She sat back down. “I was trying to help you.”

“I know what you were doing,” said Jaime. He tilted his head back, leaning it against the wall. “Do you know what I think?”

She couldn’t imagine.

“This is some sort of punishment.”

“Wasn’t your time in the cell enough?”

He smiled at that, dimly. The heat from the water was working on him, as it was on her. “You were the only visitor I had.”

“You didn’t deserve even that much.”

“You sound like Ned Stark. How could you do this, Jaime. He was your king, Jaime. Are you claiming the throne? Are you going to admit what you’ve done and face the consequence?” He sighed. “When did the Mad King have a trial? When did he submit to chains and a cell for placing pots of wildfire under Kings Landing?”

Brienne went cold. “You lie.”

“Burn them all, he said to me. Aerys had done that before, you know. He rather liked burning people. He liked how _long_ it took. The screams. I don’t think he expected me to react this time. I don’t think he expected me to kill him, too — he saw me draw my sword but he thought, maybe, that I would fall on it myself rather than kill off thousands of people ...  Thousands and thousands of people, living on top of wildfire, eating and breathing and fucking a hair’s breath from destruction, and they never knew. Aerys liked to think of that. He talked about it. He was laughing about it when I pushed the sword through his back.”

“Liar,” she said again, but it was a whisper this time. “Why did you never tell anyone?”

He made a loose-limbed shrug; the water splashed. “Ned Stark judged me guilty before I opened my mouth. He thought he knew who I was. What right did he have to look on it and call me wrong?” He was shaking now. “The Mad King, we called him, even before this. Was madness ever gentle? What right does a wolf have—”

Brienne caught him as he fell.


	2. Chapter 2

Jaime told himself he was doing the right thing. He said that as he mounted a horse and tried to hold the reins in his right hand and failed; he said it as he ate supper and he said it as he lay awake, staring up at the stars, waiting for Brienne to pull him back. They had began to switch when she was on Tarth and he in Kings Landing; distance didn’t seem to matter.

She didn’t call.

At last he fell asleep

and dreamed

not of being her — nor of fighting her — but of fighting alongside her. He was bare and so was she and the only light came from the swords they held, twin blades gleaming in the dark.

He woke in the dark, sweating —not with fever but with fear.  Brienne’s fear.

He had to go back.

He reached into the bear pit to haul her up and their hands met and he saw for one second through her eyes: a shaved-bald man, too thin, too reckless.

Her eyes were wide, guileless. Blue.

He rubbed his hand against his thigh to get rid of the feeling of her skin.

At Kings Landing he fucked his sister, ignoring her complaints and his own sick cynicism, desperate for anything that would make him whole again —

and realized the mistake when he shifted out of his own body.

It only took a second to return, and that was long enough. Brienne was bathing and she had been crying, he knew that, he felt the tight tension in her chest, although he didn’t know the cause; and now she had his secret too.

Cersei was not a fool. She stiffened under him and caught his face in her hands. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Who were you thinking of?”

Jaime smiled. “Would you be comforted if I told you it was Tyrion?”

She was not comforted. She drag her nails down his back and dragged him down under, and Jaime was willing to go.

Still: Brienne.

They met for sword-practice almost every night, down by a certain set of steps that lead to the sea. The wench was a good task-master, fair and strict, but Jaime left humiliated and furious every time.

It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t his fault and he was sure if he kept searching he could find someone to blame —

“What did you see?” he said, abrupt, falling back a moment. His wrist ached and his shoulder felt hard, overworked.

“Ser?”

“The last time we changed.”

Brienne did not reply.

“Out with it. I’m tired of these games.”

“If I had seen something,” she said, “it would not be my place to —“

“You could topple the kingdom.”

“And put what in its place?” She shook her head. “Before Renly — when that thing, that smoke murdered Renly, I found that I did not know anymore who was in the right. ... When I ran my sword through Stannis, I was only angry.”

“It was justified, wench. If he slew Renly —“

“He did.”

“You had the right to do it.”

“I was angry,” she said again. “I did not know if it was right or not, and I did not wonder. I only acted. I will not do so again.”

Her voice was slow and plodding, like a cow’s would be, he thought, if it were to speak; but laced in between the words was the sound of waves cresting and breaking, an endless song he’d never thought to hear again.

He said: “Why were you weeping that night in your rooms?”

She lifted her sword. “We’re wasting time in talk. On your mark ...”

He sent her away soon after that, seeing how Cersei’s gaze followed her. But (he told himself) she was under his protection, in a manner of speaking, so ...

Anyway, (he told himself) he might someday fight with his right hand again, if it was in Brienne’s body. And shouldn’t the blade be the finest in the kingdoms?

“Valaryian steel,” she said: it was the first time he’d heard her breathless. “Ser Jaime, ...”

“Better it go with you than stay here to cut up books, or whores, or whatever madness Joffrey would do. At least this way ... at least one of us will be able to use the damned thing.”

“Ser, I cannot —“

“You can and you _will_. Gods, woman!”

The switching was brought on by emotion -- wasn't it? -- so Jaime forced himself to be placid and dull.  He was sitting alone, wondering if he must spend his life stolid as a septa and thinking meanwhile of his mistakes — Tyrion and his father, Joffrey and Myrcella and sweet Tommen and Cersei, always Cersei —  when the horrible swaying nausea came and the black spots closed his vision.

When they opened, he was ... where?

Some barren stretch of land.

Brienne was alone. She’d built a small hot fire and let it burn to ashes, and the ashes were still warm. 

She was readying to leave this place. Her bedroll was neatly bundled, Oathkeeper inside it — he knew that without checking — she’d only paused a moment to write in a little book.

Jaime bit down on a laugh. Brienne kept a diary? It seemed so girlish.

_I hope to find,_ the last line read.

Shameless and amused, he flipped back to the start.

_Ser,_ she had written. _I feel it best to write you this way and perhaps keep you aware of the situation here ..._

It was like her to do this for him; it was like her to be so circumspect, ommiting any mention of his name, or hers, or Sansa’s.

He closed the book and watched the light break over the edge of the world.

He woke in a cold sweat from his own dreams, thinking that he should leave her a note, she'd expect it. She was owed that much.

But what was there to say?

_ I fear _ , she had written, _ that my chase might end up for nothing. If I fail again, who will trust me after? _

He woke in her body, shivering still from horrible dreams of a knife that came down and down, always a moment away from cutting off his hand, cutting away who he was in one cruel and useless motion. What is the point of living without my hand? 

Find something new to live for, fool, — and her voice was Cersei’s voice, and Cersei held the knife, and now he woke on the side of a hill.

Her body is bruised all over, aching and stiff, as if someone has beaten her.

There is nothing new in the book.

Jaime wrote instead. _Who hurt you, wench?_

He wanted to write more but even the words hurt; her fingernails were bloody and torn, her palm swollen and red. And it was so strange to use his right hand for this, so familiar and so strange ...

After the first sorrow, there is no other.

Cersei ruled over a city charred and smouldering, and Jaime should have expected it really; he should have known that whatever he loves and cherishes will be taken from him. Lost to him.

He hadn’t seen Brienne in months. Perhaps -- perhaps she was --

He was afraid for her. Alright, fine, he could say it. It didn't mean anything (nothing nowadays meant anything) and he preferred it that way. Even when he dreamt of her riding alone through woods, fighting monsters with human form, screaming for help as a noose tightens on her neck. Even when he dreamt of her in his bed.

He dreamt of her often.

Nightly, he would call it, except there are day-dreams too, when he is seated at some tedious meeting, listening to people talk very earnestly about why their countrymen deserve to murder the men of another country, and also plunder the villages and — why not? — rape the women, en masse. 

None of those people are here where the decisions are made. They are invisible pieces to be moved around on a great board of cyvasse.

Jaime never liked that game and he doesn’t like this one, but he cannot save the villagers, can he? _What can I do?_ he asked invisible Brienne, silently.

_What are you able to do?_

And sometimes too — not often — he dreamt of her when he is alone. Turned in his bed and finds her there.

I thought you were gone, he said to her.

I am coming home, she replied.

He rode North. What else was there to do?

They stared at each other.

“Ser,” she said. Her eyes flickered down to the golden hand and back up. He could not ask what she was thinking; he could not say what he wanted to say.

“That one, Jaime?” said Tyrion, when they’re alone. “Are you insane?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Are you serious?”

Jaime raised his right hand to rub at his face — it was his first response in stress, even now. “It doesn’t matter.”

Tyrion shifted in his chair. “She doesn’t seem like your type.”

“She isn’t.”

“She doesn’t seem like anyone’s type, frankly, not with that —“

“Don’t,” said Jaime. “Not about this.”

Tyrion took a drink. “You really have the worst taste in women.”

Laughing felt so goddamn good. Being with his brother felt good. 

The only thing missing is not something he was allowed to miss.

He fought in her body and in his own, and every screaming muscle is a relief, because she is still ...

They shouldn’t have survived the battle — none of them. 

He didn't need to talk to Brienne to know she felt the same way.

Afterwards of course it was madness, all of them laughing and drinking and sharing lies, and when Brienne rose up to leave — what could he do but follow her?

What could he do but knock on her door? 

What could he do but kiss her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by calling this “fairly true to show-canon” i apparently meant “i will totally forget the actual plot, mix up timing significantly, end up looking it up on wiki, and ignore what i read because it’s inconvenient lol whoops”
> 
> *
> 
> there'll be a part III, whenever it happens.
> 
> *
> 
> a zillion thanks to tall-wolf-of-tarth for catching & alerting me to my obvious braindead mistake. OY @me

**Author's Note:**

> -age differences exist here but are not so extreme as in canon, maybe like seven or eight years instead of fifteen? idk
> 
> -there will be a part ii if i ever write it but for now we’re going to pretend this is a standalone that just ends, like, really abruptly. you could say it was CUT OFF


End file.
